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Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

Originally Posted by Zook_e_Pi

case of cui plagalis than a case of cui bono.

Probably a case of equal measure...if the usual suspects are at the heart of inception and design of the blockchain and subsequent bit currencies. Some will benefit, those that either have cashed out recently or bought at the 10c a bitcoin and holding...assuming they've managed to keep their 'digital' wealth safe within the 'digital' wallet and away from the digital hackers...

Like I said...C'mon folks, this is outrageous on all levels across all social aspects of human behaviour. Lets remember that IF this is all designed by them there chosen ones, then again we get to see 'the ole sit back and watch' the stupid ass muppets called complicitors forging this blueprint into reality...the everyday greed driven folk in all walks of life.

Those designers have zero power and influence if the general folk didn't allow their self interest to dominate. We play right into their hands while they sip cognacs chuffing on cubans in the back rooms of monumental wealth while paying off social engineers to tweak and modify the masses.

Example of this is the 'social credit system'...China leading the way, or is it China following orders from their creditors using the mandate procured from those hired social engineers?

Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

Example of this is the 'social credit system'...China leading the way, or is it China following orders from their creditors using the mandate procured from those hired social engineers?

If you want my opinion, China and India ... are both virtual Rothschild estates.

China was subverted a long time ago using the British East India Tea Company and the opium trade; which then paved the road for later consolidation using the writings of Rothschild minions Marx and Engells (e.g. Communist Manifesto and other socialist dogma) and the megalomania of western-educated minion Mao Tse Tung to create the China we know today.

Ditto for India ... using the same dogma to attract well-meaning Indian youth confronted with the social injustices of their day but too immature to understand the economics of human society; then spoiling their critical thinking faculties with said dogma; then finding megalomaniac(s) that can carry buckets of water for the thirsty Judeo-British empire (e.g. Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, etc.); in the end dividing the Indian peoples along religious lines, along class lines, along political lines (e.g. market enterprise never really had an opponent in India until the socialist doctrine from the Bolshevik era in Russia found its way south) ... division and conquest.

With India and China conquered in the last century; this century is more about consolidating the conquest by the Judeo-British empire using central banks, credit manipulations, weapons sales, multinational corporations, etc.

To wit, there aren't many monkeys in India (and China and Russia) that can't be bought with shekels and bananas. All the top political, industrial, and economic leadership in all three countries are bought and branded with the mark of Zion.

How do bit currencies fit into this scheme of things? Simple ans: they effect further consolidation of the Judeo-British conquest (e.g. via a new method of fiat money control to match the technological age).

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Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

So, we've concluded on this thread that the bitcoin crypto mania is highly suspect and forces have been at play to help surge the price into the stratosphere of ridiculousness. But, without the help of the everyday numbnuts greed driven investor, this suspect manipulation would be dead in the water...no different to the designed and engineered mandates of the Central bankers, who've set the stage to then sit back and watch the everyday common folk take the bait.

Below article is interesting...and one helluva shi t show is brewing, make no mistake...read below!!

TIMEBOMB:

BITCOIN’S price could crash by up to 80 per cent if this scheme unravels, experts have warned. And the signs aren’t looking good.

BITCOIN could crash up to 80 per cent if it turns out the price has been artificially pumped up by controversial crytpocurrency tether, analysts have warned.

Tether, a so-called “stablecoin” which aims to maintain a value of one US dollar per tether, has been described as the “ticking time bomb” of the cryptocurrency world which could trigger the next “bloodbath” similar to the 2014 collapse of the Mt. Gox exchange.

And while Japanese exchange Coincheck on Friday confirmed it had lost up to $US530 million in a hack worse than the $US450 million Mt Gox theft, it’s the “tether situation” which has the market on edge.

“Everyone in crypto is very worried about the tether situation, and if these really count as dollars,” said David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain.

A key critic of tether and its owner Bitfinex, a cryptocurrency exchange registered in the British Virgin Islands, is a blogger going by the handle Bitfinex’d, who has published a series of detailed blog posts, tweets and YouTube videos outlining the scheme.

In effect, Bitfinex has been accused of creating tether out of thin air, without corresponding US dollar deposits, in order to pump up the price of bitcoin. While Bitfinex insists all new “USDT” are backed by real dollar deposits, new tether issuances have coincided with dips in the price of bitcoin.

Last week, an anonymous analyst backed up those claims in a report titled “Quantifying the Effect of Tether”, which concluded that it was “highly unlikely that tether is growing through any organic business process, rather that they are printing in response to market conditions”.

“Tether printing moves the market appreciably,” concluded the report, which compared bitcoin price movements before and after new tether issuance, as well as analysing publicly available tether transaction statistics using forensic accounting techniques.

“48.8 per cent of BTC’s price rise in the period studied occurred in the two-hour periods following the arrival of 91 different tether grants to the Bitfinex wallet,” the report said.

“Bitfinex withdrawal/deposit statistics are unusual and would give rise to further scrutiny in a typical accounting environment. If there is questionable activity, the author believes a 30-80 per cent reduction in BTC price could be forecast.”

Bitfinex has repeatedly promised investors it would produce a full audit of its books to prove it has US dollars on deposit to calm fears, but no audit has taken place.

Over the weekend, Bitfinex confirmed speculation it had severed ties with its auditor, Friedman LLP, which had earlier scrubbed all references to Bitfinex from its website. “We confirm that the relationship with Friedman is dissolved,” a spokesman told industry website CoinDesk.

“Given the excruciatingly detailed procedures Friedman was undertaking for the relatively simple balance sheet of tether, it became clear that an audit would be unattainable in a reasonable time frame.

“As tether is the first company in the space to undergo this process and pursue this level of transparency, there is no precedent set to guide the process nor any benchmark against which to measure its success.”

Mr Gerard said the market was worried that tether didn’t complete its audit. “They say they’re fully backed, but they haven’t done a full in-depth audit,” he said.

“People don’t seem to be able to redeem tethers for US dollars at all. The tether web page says they’re ‘subject to frequent professional audits’ — so they need to release those audits, and calm the market.”

Meanwhile, criticism of tether and Bitfinex is growing.

Julian Hosp, co-founder of cryptocurrency payment service TenX, has listed tether as one of four big risks, with a 10 per cent likelihood of a crash this year which could pull the market down by 15 per cent.

“Tether gets issued out of thin air through a very complex system, supposedly whenever $US1 is deposited in return,” he wrote on CNBC.

“At the moment, tether is priced at around $US1.6 billion, which supposedly means $US1.6 billion actually went into that cryptocurrency.

“According to some reports, however, there isn’t actually $US1.6 billion backing up the token. Since many exchanges and other cryptocurrencies are connected to tether, any finding that its stated value is untrue would send the market into a significant decline.”

Professor Nicholas Weaver from UC Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute has warned of a “bloodbath” in cryptocurrency prices if the “Tether printing press ever breaks”.

“At current prices, net new bitcoin requires $US18 million of net new $ flowing in to maintain the price,” he wrote on Twitter. “Yet there is a net $US100 million per day of fake $s in the form of tethers.”

New York University professor of economics Nouriel Roubini agreed. “Indeed tether/USDT used to manipulate bitcoin prices,” he wrote.

“Without this, bitcoin price would collapse by 80 per cent. Regulators asleep at the wheel while $US2 billion of fake $ created, half of it since December. Not even North Korea created so many fake $ backed by nothing.”

“We have also read online about many outlandish conspiracy theories suggesting that tether is not backed 1:1 by currency on deposit with banking institutions,” the statement said. “Any such claim is unequivocally false, and the audits will bear that out.

“The company considers all tethers outstanding to be liabilities for presentation on the balance sheet for which there is always an equivalent amount (or greater) held in assets to back those presented liabilities. Full stop.”

“To date, every claim made by these bad actors has been patently false and made simply to agitate the cryptocurrency ecosystem,” the company said in a statement at the time. “As a result, Bitfinex has decided to assert all of its legal rights and remedies against this agitator and his associates.”

Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

Bitcoin's woes have continued with the cryptocurrency dropping 12 percent to sit below US$9000 ($12,000), its lowest level since November.

The latest drop comes off the back of Facebook's recent move to ban cryptocurrency ads on the site.

Thursday's drop to as low as $9,022 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange left bitcoin trading at less than half the peak price of almost $20,000 it reached in December. It slid more than 26 percent last month, in its worst monthly performance since January 2015.

Other cryptocurrencies, including Ripple, the third-largest by market value, and Bitcoin Cash, have also racked up double-digit declines in the last 24 hours, according to Coinmarketcap.com, which tracks the industry. Ethereum was up slightly on the day.

Last year's explosive rise in the value of digital coins and the flood of new retail investors drawn to the market have rattled global regulators nervous about a sector used largely for speculation.

Officials have said cryptocurrencies are used by criminals to launder money. India, which has likened the market to a Ponzi scheme, on Thursday vowed to eliminate their use.

The Indian finance minister said his government would take "all measures" to remove crypto-assets in "financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system", Arun Jaitley told parliament.

"Sentiment towards cryptocurrencies is turning sour with negative headlines pouring out from left, right and centre," said Fawad Razaqzada, an analyst at FOREX.com

"Concerns that Facebook is banning ads and major crypto exchanges shutting down have really silenced the hype and some people are probably having second thoughts about investing their hard-earned cash into digital currencies."

Facebook said in a post on its website this week that it was banning all advertising that "promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency".

It was not clear whether the ban would affect all cryptocurrency adverts on the social media site. Facebook could not immediately be reached for comment.

REGULATORY CRACKDOWN

A $530 million hack of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck late last week has also weighed on the market, along with a subpoena U.S. regulators sent to two of the world's biggest cryptocurrency players, Bitfinex and Tether.

In a development welcomed by cryptocurrency investors, the finance minister of South Korea, a major hub for digital coin trading, said on Wednesday there was no plan to outlaw their buying and selling after regulators had earlier pledged to do so .

Critics call cryptocurrencies a speculative mania that will end in tears for thousands of retail investors. Supporters say the price volatility is a distraction from the value of the underlying technology.

Those backers believe cryptocurrencies and the "blockchain" technology underpinning them will transform the way money is stored and transferred, upending the conventional banking system.

"Short-term pessimism misses the point that it could make the ecosystem thrive in the long term," said Charles Hayter, founder of London-based Cryptocompare.

International regulators are set to debate how to address the risks posed by the market at the next G20 meeting in March.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney said this week that the G20 needed to consider how easily digital coins should be converted into other central-bank issued currencies, as well as the role of anonymity, as "a lot of the underlying use of these currencies has been illicit activity".

Bitcoin rallied more than 1,000 percent last year as speculators piled in. The price was less than $500 as recently as early 2016.

Ok, you wouldn't. But how many would? How many could? Ultimately, the trading in Sunflowers is limited to a select few. It is part of their economy, not yours or mine. Still, it becomes a problem for the rest of us because their currency and our currency have a 1:1 correspondence in the existing money system. By fiat declarations originally made centuries ago.

The challenge is to find a new money system that eliminates fiat. A merit-based money system, if you will. Good luck in that endeavor. While that is undoubtedly the solution. It is not an easy one to access.

That said, two of the key components of any real solution are:
(1) universal trading
(2) a closed system (e.g. no leakage of value).

How many are willing to trade in Van Gogh art?
How many are willing to trade in bitcoins?
How many are willing to trade in US dollars?
How many are willing to trade in gold?

Only two of the value tokens above have universal appeal. But even the U.S dollar is mostly mirage. And it is slowly losing its universal appeal. Once that erodes beyond a certain point, it will no longer be viable as a value exchange token. Don't know when that will happen, but it's only a matter of time.

The U.S. has delayed the inevitable with cycles of "old war theft; agitprop in the antebellum; new war; post-bellum codificaton of new war theft". One might argue that these are the moneylenders' four HOTA (e.g. Horsemen Of The Apocalypse). And they can convincingly win that argument.

Anyways, don't want to stray too far from the main point, namely, the universality of appeal or lack of it.

Because they lack universal appeal, bitcurrencies really are just poker games being played by expert poker players ... and the casinos are all owned and maintained by the moneylenders ... and patronized by suckers, hard-earned cash, and separatory funnels heated by the former's gambling habits. That sorta thing.

Pax

ps: That said, digital currency will arrive eventually. We're running out of trees and the ore supply is finite. Virtual tokens are a veritable treasure map to infinity and infinite supply. Just don't expect digital currencies to be independent of the current system of theft. That will only happen if and when a critical mass of awareness establishes in the goodness of people, not before.

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Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

Originally Posted by Zook_e_Pi

Because they lack universal appeal, bitcurrencies really are just poker games being played by expert poker players ... and the casinos are all owned and maintained by the moneylenders ... and patronized by suckers, hard-earned cash, and separatory funnels heated by the former's gambling habits. That sorta thing.

Yup, Totally agree. That sums it up nicely.

Originally Posted by Zook_e_Pi

That said, digital currency will arrive eventually. We're running out of trees and the ore supply is finite. Virtual tokens are a veritable treasure map to infinity and infinite supply. Just don't expect digital currencies to be independent of the current system of theft. That will only happen if and when a critical mass of awareness establishes in the goodness of people, not before.

Yes, the underpinning technology is here to stay, and if we think of Bitcoin and it's spawned offspring as first out of the blocks, and like most new things, there's an ironing out period. A period where the systems flaws are exposed (regulation in the first instance). And no, digital currency will not be independent of the established money monopolies. It will indeed integrate under the umbrella of the very same system we have today.

The idea first created (as it's considered the reason for the blockchain invention) was to mitigate the establishment after the GFC caused by deception and deliberate theft. To offer another system, unregulated and anomalous to a degree. Where one could use bitcoin to trade while circumventing traditional currencies.

As mentioned in this thread. This entire inception and explosion of unregulated wealth could well be a designed system. Ready and waiting to improve and control the 'digital' exchange of value. I'm not sure still, but it has what appears to be a stench beyond just greed driven robots...And as I always write. It takes the readiness of everyday folk to test the design, expose the flaws and mostly to create the wealth via greed driven mania.

Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

China is to block all websites related to cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings (ICOs) - including foreign platforms - in a bid to finally quash the market completely.

"To prevent financial risks, China will step up measures to remove any onshore or offshore platforms related to virtual currency trading or ICOs," said an article published by Financial News, a publication affiliated to the People's Bank of China.
The article acknowledged that recent attempts to stamp out digital currencies by shutting down domestic exchanges had failed to completely eradicate trading.

"ICOs and virtual currency trading did not completely withdraw from China following the official ban ... after the closure of the domestic virtual currency exchanges, many people turned to overseas platforms to continue participating in virtual currency transactions.

"Overseas transactions and regulatory evasion have resumed ... risks are still there, fuelled by illegal issuance, and even fraud and pyramid selling," the article said.

Following the reports, advertisements for cryptocurrencies have stopped appearing on Baidu, China's biggest search engine, and social media platform Weibo.

"It is common for people to use VPNs [virtual private networks] to trade cryptocurrencies, as many exchange platforms relocated to Japan or Singapore," said Donald Zhao, an individual bitcoin trader who relocated to Tokyo from Beijing late last year, following the ban.

"I think the new move literally means it would be even harder to circumvent the ban in China ... people promoting related business programmes may be arrested," Zhao said.

China banned both ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges in September, but trading by individuals has remained a murky area with many businessmen relocating to Hong Kong or Japan while still raising funds from mainland investors.

Two weeks ago, the PBOC ordered financial institutions to stop providing funding to any activity related to cryptocurrencies, further tightening the noose.

"It's positive news for Japan and Singapore, because demand for participating in trading is not diminishing and traders have got to go somewhere," said Ace Yang, executive director of Cathay Capital, a private equity firm based in Beijing.

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Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

Originally Posted by Ross

Yes, the underpinning technology is here to stay

I wrote above in reference to the blockchain tech...I've made a new thread specifically for understanding the 'blockchain' tech and what it means for the future...or another way to look at it is...the new wild-west of internet protocols.

Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

Remember Jordan Belfort? The real life wolf of wall street dude...We'll here's his take. This is a Man who made unimaginable wealth scamming and ripping off people before his greed driven narcissistic self caught up with him.

Can you trust the dude? Nope nada never...but that doesn't mean his take on the crypto currency market is wrong...the elephant in the room is the crypto tether...read below.

BITCOIN and other cryptos are “pump-and-dump” scams, according to the man who made more than $250 million in similar scams.

CRYPTOCURRENCIES are “pump-and-dump” schemes being promoted by “scamsters”, according to the real-life Wolf of Wall Street who made his money swindling investors in pump-and-dump schemes.

In an interview with The Street, Jordan Belfort predicted the crypto craze would come to a bad end and millennial investors would be “left holding the bag”. “They’re all [pump-and-dump schemes],” he said.

“At this point in time the money’s been made in bitcoin already. If you’re in the crypto game right now and you’re looking to make money — the guys that are really committing the fraud — the only way to do it is, you need to issue a new currency at the bottom and ride it up.”

The founder of stockbroker Stratton Oakmont, whose memoir was adapted into the 2013 biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio, defrauded investors out of an estimated $US200 million through “pump-and-dump” schemes.

They involve buying and then artificially boosting the price of cheap “penny stocks” through misleading statements before cashing out. Belfort, now a motivational speaker, served 22 months of a four-year sentence after being convicted of securities fraud and money laundering in 1999.

He told The Street that the only way to keep issuing new cryptos was to “keep bitcoin up high enough so people still believe in cryptocurrency so they create the illusion of prosperity”. “This is what I did, I’m sad to say, at Stratton,” he said.

“The days of bitcoin making money are over for the scamsters. Where’s it going to be? It’s $US8000, it could go up to $US10,000, down to $US2000, I think it’s going to be zero pretty quickly, but besides that, the only way to make money is to create a new supply of some new cryptocurrency, and then by keeping the old ones high enough people will dump even more money into the new ones and they make their money on that.

“It’s pure fraud and I feel so bad, because the millennials, these kids, they’re not breaking the law, they’re not trying to commit fraud, they’re being taken for a ride right now, they’ve been sold a bill of goods.”

Belfort said he was “trying to wake a lot of them up”. He cited the growing concerns about controversial cryptocurrency tether, a so-called “stablecoin” which claims to hold US dollar deposits in a one-to-one ratio. Critics have alleged that tether is being created out of thin air in order to buy bitcoin, artificially inflating the price.

“They hate me right now but they’re going to love me in a few months when the crap really hits the fan, when it’s [found] out that tether doesn’t exist, or half of it’s missing, and then the FBI’s going to swoop in, SWAT teams, it’s going to be really bad stuff,” he said.

“You’re going to find out that it was even worse than I ever imagined, because that’s how these things [are] in an unregulated market — it attracts the worst people. So all these millennials, I love them, it’s not your fault, but there’s a lot of really bad people at the centre of this thing that are setting you up and you’re going to be left holding the bag. They call them ‘hodlers’.”

Belfort said it was “not just a matter of saying, if there’s not as much tether we have to subtract $US3000 out of bitcoin”. “It’s not that, it’s much worse than that,” he said. “Because what you’ll see is that they used tether to artificially support the market of bitcoin, thereby dragging more suckers into the game.

“It’s maintaining the illusion of prosperity, not allowing something to go down that should be going down, and by keeping it up they bring more people into the game.”

He predicted that “when that comes out”, regulators would be swift to act. “You see it happening right now, the first step is there’s been a sort of industry-wide co-ordination of all the banks around the world to de-link their system from bitcoin,” Belfort said.

“That’s step one, isolate the virus. Step two is going to be, crush it. And that’s my problem with bitcoin — I don’t think bitcoin itself is a fraud, it never was a fraud, it’s what people do to bitcoin that’s a fraud. It lends itself to being manipulated.”

He added that there was a “major disconnect between reality and fantasy” when it came to bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, for which there are “major applications” inside and outside the financial sector.

“That has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, though,” Belfort said. “This current crop of cryptos, bitcoin and its babies, I think they all have zero value and they’re going to zero.”

After a brutal sell-off sparked by a wave of negative news since the start of the year, cryptocurrencies rebounded somewhat last week following US Senate testimony by the heads of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SEC boss Jay Clayton and CFTC chair J. Christopher Giancarlo, while addressing the risk of fraud, were widely seen as striking a positive tone on the future of cryptocurrencies.
Article

Re: Bitcoin...A suckers paradise.

Latest news...

THE cryptocurrency world has plunged into chaos after a shocking revelation that could threaten the existence of Bitcoin.

Article:

THE juggernaut that is Bitcoin has been rocked by a child porn scandal, after illicit content was found in its blockchain.Researchers in Germany sifted through more than 1000 files in the ledger system that provides the backbone for Bitcoin, and discovered 99 per cent of them contained hundreds of links to child pornography, among other outlawed content.

The blockchain is the underlying technology that makes cryptocurrencies possible, and is an unchangeable, open register with all the transactions that have ever been made in the currency.

“Our analysis shows that certain content, e.g., illegal pornography, can render the mere possession of a blockchain illegal,” RWTH Aachen University researchers wrote in their report.

This discovery essentially makes ownership of Bitcoin illegal in more than 100 countries because of laws about the possession and distribution of child pornography.

While the public ledger is meant to store financial information related to Bitcoin transactions, other information can also be inserted into the blockchain by users on the system.

The data capacity on the Bitcoin blockchain is only 80 bytes, which is far too small to harbour many images, however it’s more than enough for links and pointers — which is primarily what researches discovered.

“Since all blockchain data is downloaded and persistently stored by users, they are liable for any objectionable content added to the blockchain by others. Consequently, it would be illegal to participate in a blockchain-based [system] as soon as it contains illegal content,” the paper added.

The revelation will inevitably come before legislators, with a defence likely to argue that links to illegal content should not be in the same league as illegal content alone, but given the severity of child pornography, it will prove to be a tough battle for Bitcoin and possibly other cryptocurrencies.

Interpol actually identified the threat of illegal content being embedded in blockchain systems in 2015. They didn’t find any malware files however discovered random information could be interspersed in Bitcoin’s public record.